PBN BLUEPRINT FOR 2015How to Create & Use PBN's to Dominate Your Market

By Nathan Gotch

Provided as an educational service by Gotch SEO, LLC

The First ROI-Driven SEO Company in St. Louis

www.GotchSEO.com

Hey again, its Gotch. Welcome to the Private Blog Network Blueprint for 2015.

Im going to get right down to business and explain exactly how to build a private blog network that A) allows you to rank for pretty much anything, B) gives you complete control of your link and anchor profile, and C) gives you an advantage over your competitors that will have them ripping out their hair saying, I dont understand how these guys are ranking above us!!! Heres exactly what youre going to learn:

5 HUGE Misconceptions About Private Blog Networks

Exact Steps for Finding Powerful Domains + Bidding Strategies for Winning the Domains (that wont cost you an arm and a leg)

Complete Instructions for Setting Up Your Network

Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Your Network

Sound pretty cool? Lets jump right into it.

Before we get into the real intense stuff, I need to cover this for anyone who currently has an imaginary private blog network. I know all of this stuff is going to seem overwhelming and youre going to ask 2354234297 questions, but I need you to do one thing for me: just follow the instructions I give you, TAKE ACTION, and let the pieces fall into place. I promise you, this stuff is really not complicated and once you get the process down, it will be robotic.

5 Huge Misconceptions About Private Blog Networks 1. I Need a Huge BudgetTo give you some perspective, I purchased my first three expired domains for my network for less than $150. Nearly a year and half later, I still have these three domains and they are still helping rank my sites. The moral of the story, YOU DONT NEED A HUGE BUDGET.

Every person who has a huge network, started out with only one domain. If youre serious about SEO, then there is no better investment than purchasing domains for a private blog network. Since youre reading this, then you probably know this. 2. PBNs Are Only for SEO ProsDont let gurus fool you. Building a private blog network is not rocket science. In fact, once you setup your first couple sites, it will be like tying your shoes. 3. I Need a Massive Network to Be Able to CompeteIf you follow the steps Im going to show you, you can often dominate keywords with less than 5-10 websites. Think small, get some quick wins, and then expand. Dont think you need a 100-site network tomorrow. Be realistic. 4. Google Will Discover My Network and My Life Will Be RuinedThe chances of Google singling out your network are pretty low. Trust me, they have bigger fish to fry than taking down your 10 websites. Im going to show you exactly what you need to do, to keep your site as safe as possible. Keep in mind, no matter what steps you take, there is still risks involved with PBNs.

5. Private Blog Networks are 100% SafeAnyone that really says / believes that their network is 100% safe is absolutely fooling themselves. It doesnt matter if Albert Einstein himself built your network, Google still has the capability of discovering ANY network if they really tried. No, the algorithm will probably never be able to spot a good network, but throw in a team of manual reviewers and I can assure you that they discover at least some of your network. Im saying this because you need to know that there are risks involved with building a private blog network. The main risk being that Google discovers your network, deindexes the sites, and you lose your rankings.

Domain Research: EVERYTHING You Need to KnowThe guidelines youre about to see are exactly what I give my domain researchers. Theres no time for fluff, just exactly what you need to know about finding some quality domains for your network. I use a few different websites and PR Power Shot to find every domain. Here are a few of my favorite sites:

http://www.prdrop.info/expired-domains/

http://moonsy.com/expired_domains/

http://www.expireddomains.net/

Although PR Powershot does cost money, it is really good for finding domains that are true diamonds in the rough. Many of the domains it scrapes dont have a ton of eyeballs on them and youll be able to steal some good ones for cheap. I dont recommend many SEO programs or software, but Im really grateful for PR Powershot because its what helped me find my first sites for my network. Heres a link to their site: http://prpowershot.com/ - this is NOT an affiliate link and I will NOT earn a commission if you buy it. Just an honest recommendation. Now that you have the tools of the trade, you need to start doing research, bidding, and winning some domains.

Quality Check #1: IndexingSimply copy and paste the prospective URL into Google search. If it doesnt show up, then do not use it. You can also use: site:blah.com. If the site isnt indexed then its useless.

Quality Check #2: Understand What Good Expired Domains Look Like Minimum: PA 30 +, DA 20 +, Trust Flow 10 +

These are MY minimum metrics because I have the budget to bid and win stronger domains. If youre starting out, you can decrease your minimums to this: PA 20, DA 15, Trust Flow 10 (anything lower than these metrics will be pretty much useless)

Wide variety of natural anchor text: lots of generic, branded, and naked link anchors.

Links are coming from real websites (not made for SEO)

They tell a story (story titles as anchor text)

Have links from .edu or .gov websites

Lots of referring domains / unique IPs

There are OLD links hitting the site

Quality Check #3: RelevancyIf there is anything you get out of this blueprint it needs to be what I'm about to show you. After a domain has passed all of the checkpoints above, it is ideal that it is also relevant to your money website.

Google uses these four factors to determine the relevancy of a link: the surrounding content, the overall theme of the site itself, the anchor text, and most importantly, it's LINK PROFILE.

Most people who build PBNs understand the first three factors, but don't get the last one and it is the most important of all.

If an expired domain achieves all four of the relevancy factors, you will have an extremely powerful link. And most importantly, it is SAFE. Google can easily spot out a PBN in most cases because the link profile of the expired domains doesn't match your money site. So, although you took the necessary precautions to write relevant content and make the site relevant, you'll still get caught because the link profile doesn't make sense.

Okay, so now that my rant is over, how do you go about finding the link relevancy of a prospective domain?

Majestic SEO's paid feature allows you to see the link relevancy for any given domain. Like any other tool, it's not perfect, but it's very accurate.

Here's an example:

Now, are you always going to be able to get 100% relevancy with expired domains? Definitely not, but if you can, do it.

If finding relevant domains is difficult, then just make sure they follow the checkpoints above and below at the very least.

Quality Check #4: Anchor Text AnalysisI always start my critique of a website by looking at the anchor text. Often times, its more than enough to determine whether or not a domain is worth it.

Tools for checking anchor text: Majestic SEO: http://www.majesticseo.com/

Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/

Open Site Explorer: http://moz.com/researchtools/ose

Avoid websites with any of the anchor text below:

Foreign language: Chinese, Russian, Spanish, etc. Only English language backlinks.

Porno, Gambling, Pills/Pharma, Payday Loans, anything illegal

Over-optimized anchor text

Example: 90% of the backlinks use the anchor text SEO.

Quality Check #5: Link Profile Analysis Avoid any website with spammy backlinks

forum profiles

comment spam

spammy directory links

SAPE or foreign links

blog network links

Watch out for 301 redirects a 301 will inflate a sites stats and can removed by the original owner after you purchase it. Check for 301s with https://ahrefs.com/. Wayback Machine

Go to https://archive.org/web/

Make sure the site was legit: not used for spamming, was not previously apart of a blog network, wasnt a porn, gambling, pharma, payday loans, or illegal downloads website.

Best Types of Expired Domains Relevant: as I mentioned above, if you can get relevant domains it's going to produce the best results.

Personal blogs: my favorite because most personal blogs write about whatever the heck they want. Thats exactly what Ill be doing with my new site. Personal blogs are also super easy to repurpose. Government or education related: I love these because they will often have aged .gov and .edu links. If youre just starting out, you dont need to have as strict guidelines as I do. I still use PR as a quality metric because Google still uses it. Every metric including PR, DA, PA, and Trust Flow can be manipulated. So be careful before jumping on the Moz metric bandwagon. If a site has good AGED links, then its probably going to have good PR.

Failed Startups: expired domains from failed startups are the best because they will generally have links from powerful domains like Mashable, TechCrunch, etc.

News Sites: expired news websites always have strong backlinks.

Bidding StrategiesIf youre already involved in auctions for expired domains, then youre well aware of the rising costs. As the market for building PBN's rises, so does the saturation in auctions. Fortunately, because of the very basic bidding strategies Im about to show you, youll be able to secure some really quality domains without having to drop insane amounts of cash.

Strategy #1: Sniper methodUsing the sniper method works best if you are using PR Powershot. Since this software pulls more expired domains than other tools, you will often find diamonds in the rough. Now this is where most people make a mistake You see a good domain, no one is bidding on it, and so you take the opportunity to get the first bid in. Bad idea.

All it takes is one bid and sharks like me who have a big budget dedicated to expired domains, will beat most people out in a bidding war. Heres what youre going to do instead:

Dig through PR Powershot

If you like a domain, then WATCH IT DONT BID. Just click the eyeball button in GoDaddy auctions and youll be able to monitor the domain.

Research more until you find 10-30 domains to WATCH. Not bid.

At this stage, some of the domains will be found and the bidding wars will begin. But a lot of the time (if you dug in and did your search), youll have a group of domains that have zero bids or only 1-3 max. Now, heres the important part: you are going to bid once the timer gets down to the last 30 seconds. Yes, the timer will reset back to 5 minutes, but at this point you can pretty much guarantee a win. You have to be sneaky.

Aimlessly bidding on domains will do nothing except get you into budget wars.

Strategy #2: Easy WinsIt doesnt matter whether you have a budget or youre just starting out with your private blog network, going for small wins is still super smart. What do I mean by small wins? Small wins are when you win many average domains instead of dumping money into one super strong domain. Example: I would rather pay $300 for ten DA 15 domains than $300 for two DA 50 domains. Why? Because you can do SO much more. First, youre sending way more relevancy to your site. Instead of two relevant links, youre getting TEN relevant links. Secondly, youre increasing the IP diversity of your link profile. More unique IPs linking to your site increases trust and rankings. Lastly, you have way more freedom for using safe anchor text diversity. If you only have two DA 50 domains, you would HAVE to use two keyword-rich anchors. While this probably wouldnt get you penalized, you still wouldnt have the luxury of using ten domains to dilute your anchor profile.

16 Strategies for Flying Under the RadarThe key to protecting your PBN from being deindexed by Google is to simply make it look natural. Everything Im about to show you will keep your site as safe as possible and will make it extremely difficult for competitors to snitch you out to Google about your network. Like I said in the beginning, nothing you do can keep your site 100% safe, but these strategies can certainly decrease the chances of your network being discovered.

1. OrganizationBefore I explain some of the intense details, you need to make sure youre staying organized. Create an excel file to track these important things:

Domain name

Registrar Account Information

Host Information (cPanel login)

IP Address for Each Site

Blog Login Information

2. Consistently Random InformationOne of the easiest ways for Google to uncover a network is to look at information consistencies. The trick is to have unique information for every domain, but to be consistent at the same time.

Now that I've confused you, let me break it down. Here's the process you should use:1. You win an expired domain2. You go to this site http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ and get fake information for

your domain owner. Let's name him Bob Smith.3. Change your domain registration information to match Bob Smith4. Get private WHOIS protection for the domain (layer of protection)5. Get hosting and change the hosting account information to Bob Smith's information

BEFORE changing your nameservers6. Install Wordpress and make the username be Bob Smith7. Create an About page for Bob Smith8. Create social profiles on Twitter, Google +, or Facebook for Bob Smith and link to the

expired domain

This should be the process for every single domain. Every domain should use a new person and personality. The more intense you get with making this person real, the safer your network will be.

3. Hosting (Cheap vs SEO Hosting)To get the most out of your network and to keep it as safe as possible, you should go with separate hosting. Ive explained this before, but its actually cheaper to place your sites on separate hosts than to pay for SEO hosting. Heres a comparison: Different Host for Every Website ($1 Hosting)25 different hosts ($12 per year) = $300 * each host gives you a unique IP on a different C Block SEO Hosting10 IPs with 1 host ($25 per month) = $300 Not only are you getting way more for your money with separate hosts, but youre also dramatically decreasing your chances of Google or your competitors finding your network.

4. Fake Hosting Information This one is a little trickier because it will set off spam filters when trying to register a domain for hosting. The easiest way around it is to use your real information that aligns with your billing information. As soon as your site becomes Active in your account, change the information to something fake. Many people skip out on this and its a huge mistake because the scraper websites will collect not only your domain registrar information, but also your updated hosting information on the site. Once it does, its on display for the world to see. Some scraper sites will literally show the email you used to register your hosting account. Thats why its critical to change your account information BEFORE changing your nameservers.

5. Blogging Platforms I personally use Wordpress for 99% of my websites and theres really no danger because its the most popular blogging platform in the world. However, if youre super paranoid, you can use multiple blogging platforms. Im not going to get into how to install Wordpress, but I will tell you THE most important part about your installation: the login information. You need to create 100% unique login information for EVERY single Wordpress site you create. If you created the excel file for organization, keeping track will be easy. The reason for doing this is to prevent your site from being hacked. To date, Ive had one website that was hacked and when youre managing a large network, its very easy for something like that to fly under the radar for days or even weeks. The moral of the story is that its super annoying, so by using unique account information and installing the plugins Ill show you, your site should be safe from most attacks.

6. Trust FactorsNow we got all of that really exciting installation stuff out of the way, Im going to show you exactly what you need to do create network sites that look natural. The trick to all of these things is to be completely random. There should be no patterns at all. For example, sometimes youll create an About page and a Welcome post, and other times you wont. Be random with every site.

The key to keeping your site from getting deindexed is to make it look normal. Please do not overcomplicate this. Just make your site look like other sites on the internet. That simple. Cycle these things for maximum randomness:

Create About, Contact, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service

Create Welcome post

Populate the sidebar with advertisements, recent posts, videos, infographics, author profile, etc.

DO NOT use AdSense on your sites. For the Ads, you can just throw up from relevant banner ads from Commission Junction or Clickbank.

Always use a unique theme and design

Custom logo (optional)

Social profiles for the personality

Place optin forms in the sidebar for an email list

7. PluginsYou really dont need to go crazy with plugins. Only use the plugins you absolutely need. Try to mix it up and avoid installing the same group of plugins on every site.

All-in-One SEO Pack this is my personal favorite because of the deindexing settings. Yoast has the same capabilities, so cycle through these two, but for the sake of randomness, you should consider not installing either on some sites. When you do install one, use it to deindex categories, archives, tags, author archives, and pagination pages. Auto Terms of Service and Privacy Policy create terms of service and privacy policy pages in about two minutes. Better WP Security this will help protect your sites from hacking. Botguard this plugin blocks Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, and Open Site Explorer. Dont use it on every site because its a footprint. You can also use Spyder Spanker or block the spiders manually through the .htaccess file. Contact Form Plugin create contact form for your contact page. Disable Feeds one way for your competitors to find your network is through feed searches. Google Sitemap Generator this helps with indexing. Simple 301 Redirects go into Ahrefs and click on Top Pages. Use this plugin to redirect any strong internal pages (that have links) to the homepage. Link Juice Keeper the alternative to manually redirecting the strongest pages, is to use link juice keeper. It redirects all 404 pages to the homepage. I recommend manually redirecting instead of using this plugin because a sitewide redirect is kind of sketchy. WP Comment Cleaner I dont like using Askimet because of the footprint, so I use this instead.

Social Share Plugins add social sharing plugins to your post to make things more natural.

Related Posts use related post plugins that will internally link to other articles on your site. This will increase the trust of your PBN sites and make them more natural.

8. Theming the SitesOkay, so now your sites are setup and looking natural. At this point, you need to decide what the theme of your site is going to be. Original Theme some people like to go back and theme the site just like it was before. So, if the expired domain was originally about cat training, then the new site would be about cat training. Important: dont go back and steal the content of the previous owner. You will get in serious trouble for doing this, so dont mess around. Theres nothing wrong with theming the site the same, but dont use their content. If you do decide on this route, there are some tricks for linking out to irrelevant websites. So, lets say on my network of cat training websites, I wanted to link to my website about SEO. How would I do it? Considering they have ZERO relevancy? Here the types of articles I would write:

Wanted to Thank the SEO Expert Who Help Us Develop This Site

Why Would a Cat Training Website Want SEO?

The HORRIBLE Experience We Had on This Site With SEO

You get the point? Writing an article like this wouldnt seem out of the ordinary because it looks like youre simply venting on your blog. News Site this is one my favorite strategies because it allows me to link to many different types of websites without being sketchy. I choose major categories like Health, Business, Technology, and Law. Personal Blog like news sites, personal blogs give you a ton of freedom with linking out. Create a unique personality, and write in the first person. Super Relevant if youre in a competitive niche, then this is the best strategy. Although it severely limits what types of websites you can link out to, it is the most powerful version of a network site. In essence, if your main site is about dog training, then you would re-theme your network sites to be all about dog training. Broad Relevancy The other option is make your network sites broadly relevant. So if youre trying to rank your money site for link building, then your network sites could be about SEO or even more broadly, Internet Marketing.

9. Domain Level vs Page Level RelevancyIt is CRITICAL that you understand this concept. This will seem redundant but it will help you create a super strong PBN. THE Strongest Link Situation:Website about Husky training writes unique article about Husky training and links to your Husky training website contextually within the article - This is the most relevant and powerful type of link you can get because youre not only getting domain level relevancy, but youre also getting page level relevancy. Is it possible for you to get a lot of these links? Definitely not. The Second Strongest Link Situation:Website generally about dogs writes unique article about Husky training and links to your Husky training website contextually within the article. Ideal Link Situation #3Website about generally about dogs writes unique article about dog training. In the article there is small section about Husky training and a link to your Husky training website. Ideal Link Situation #4Personal blog about general topics decides to write an article about Husky training and links back to your site about Husky training. Okay, so what am I trying to explain to you here?

1. Domain level + page level relevancy = strongest link 2. Page level relevancy only = strong link

Yes, domain level relevancy is ideal, but the majority of links on the internet are only relevant on the page level. Look at every news website there is. They write about hundreds of different topics. Do the sites they link to get hit with penalties? Absolutely not. The moral of the story is that you can theme your network sites however you want, as long as there is page level relevancy. Dont be stupid and write an article about payday loans and link to your husky training website.

10. ContentIn case you didnt realize from the examples above, when Im talking about page level relevancy Im referring to the content on your network site. The content on your network sites will completely depend on what your theme is. However, there are some general guidelines to follow with every site. Vary Up the Length Try to avoid having only 400-word articles on your site. Mix it up between 100-1,000 words. Use Filler Content - instead of only having contextual articles, you should also throw in some relevant videos, quotes, infographics, statistics, and even some content without links. Frequency - dont have any pattern to posting frequency. Most importantly, dont publish articles with links all on the same day. Spread them out over the week or month.

11. Anchor TextLike everything else on your network, you need to avoid patterns. So, on any given site in your network, avoid only having keyword-rich anchor text. There should be a LARGE mix of anchor text diversity on every site. As far as linking to your money site, you already know what works best. Read my anchor text article: http://www.gotchseo.com/anchor-text/

16. Outbound LinksThere are some specifics that you need to understand regarding your outbound links. This applies to every site on your network. Max 15 outbound links Ive tested this a lot and link power begins to diminish around 15 outbound links. You can go up higher but two important things happen, 1) your links become weaker, 2) youre exposing yourself to a possible algorithmic update targeting excessive outbound links on homepage. This hasnt happened thus far, but its definitely a possibility. Avoid spammy industries this should be obvious, but you should avoid linking out to industries known for shady SEO tactics such as gambling, payday loans, pharma, illegal downloads, etc. Dont repeatedly link to the same sites if you have 10 sites in your network and you link out to the same 20 websites on each site, then youre leaving a huge footprint. Its okay to link out to the same websites sometimes, but be careful and make an effort to be completely random. DO link out to relevant authority websites not only is it natural to link out to other resources, but it also differentiates your network from 99% of the others out there. Most networks ONLY link to money websites because they are trying to preserve link juice instead of trying to protect the network. If you follow these outbound link principles, it will be VERY difficult for Google to devise an update to the algorithm that could penalize your websites. Why? Because there would be MASSIVE causalities involved. Almost every website on the Internet links out to relevant resources. This has been happening since the inception of the Internet, so I dont see how Google could penalize on this alone. They can certainly figure out a way to penalize networks based on other patterns, but if you follow the steps Ive given you, your network will be pretty safe.

That's It!If you follow the steps I've laid out, you'll have a strong and safe network that will allow you to rank websites through 2015 and beyond.

If you enjoyed this guide, feel free to share it with your friends.

Thank you for reading and now all that's left for you to do is TAKE ACTION. Taking action is what helped me build my SEO agency to what it is today. I'm no more talented and definitely no smarter than you. All I did was take action, learn, and continue to improve.

Like Nike says, Just Do It.

If you enjoyed this eBook, make sure you head over to my Facebook page and join the community. I share exclusive tips and strategies with the page, so I think you'll like being a part of it.

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Talk to you soon and thanks for reading!

NATHAN GOTCHwww.GotchSEO.com